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The Daily Dish - 2006-2011 archives for The Daily Dish, featuring Andrew Sullivan

On Good And Bad

By The Daily Dish
Apr 19 2009, 11:49 AM ET

A writer at Less Wrong updates Nietzsche:

...the big problem, the world-breaking problem, is that sticking everything good and bad about something into one big bin and making decisions based on whether it's a net positive or a net negative is an unsubtle, leaky heuristic completely unsuitable for complicated problems....the War on Drugs would make a good stock example of irrationality. So, why is the War on Drugs so popular? I think it's because drugs are obviously BAD. They addict people, break up their families, destroy their health, drive them into poverty, and eventually kill them. If we've got to have a category "drugs", and we've got to call it either "good" or "bad", then "bad" is clearly the way to go. And if drugs are bad, getting rid of them would be good! Right?



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